Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories -- and maybe, a way forward.
Let’s look further at one historic series of experiments. Deci & Ryan have published many studies on intrinsic motivation since the early 1970’s, and their research has been verified by follow-up studies. For example, they studied children who were given rewards such as money or grades for performing an intrinsically interesting task like solving a puzzle. They found that when the reward stopped, the “rewarded” children spent less time on the activity that they had previously enjoyed for its own sake. Children engaged in the same experiment who were not rewarded demonstrated no reduction in intrinsic motivation, and children who received feedback (not praise or reward) demonstrated an increase in intrinsic motivation. According to Deci & Ryan (1971), Monetary rewards decrease intrinsic motivation for the rewarded activity—puzzle solving in a laboratory experiment and headline writing in a field experiment. By contrast, positive performance feedback enhanced intrinsic motivation for the target activity in a laboratory experiment. One way to rephrase this in school terms is to suggest that students who enjoy reading for its own sake may enjoy reading less for its own sake if they are given a reward for reading.
Motivating your students with technology
Explore the Motivating Your Students page. You will find a wealth of ideas for encouraging intrinsic motivation in your classroom including links to several different technologies that might help, such as CPS pads (we use Senteo remotes in our district), web conferencing (we use Skype in our district), concept mapping software (we use Inspiration and Kidspiration), screen capturing (we use SmartRecorder), and discussion boards (available through Ning social networking for educators).
Motivating students with technology and engaging tasks
Read through this PowerPoint presentation for ideas to motivate students with technology applications by posing challenging and meaningful tasks (the applications information begins on page 15).
Motivating students with online assessment
One of the technologies I have found useful in motivating students by giving them objective, instantaneous feedback is www.quia.com. Quia allows me to create assessments with multiple choice, bimodal, matching, short answer, matching, ordering, and essay questions. When I enter the questions, I also enter feedback which the student will read if they get the question wrong. The feedback might be a reminder of the formula they needed to solve the problem or a description of common errors to avoid. All of the questions except for the essay can be graded automatically by the program. When I create an online quiz for my students, I set it up to select 15 questions randomly from a database of questions I have created for that topic. Each time they take the quiz, they get a different set of questions and the program automatically keeps the highest score. And I set it up so that the program tells the student after each question if they have answered correctly or not. Since the computer is scoring the quiz (no partial credit), students perceive the scoring as objective. The instant feedback alerts them to their mistakes so they are less likely to repeat the error in similar problems that follow. And since they are getting a different set of problems each time, I don't mind them retaking the quiz as many times as they want to until they achieve the level of mastery they want. Students are self-motivated to keep working until they reach that goal; for some it is a passing score and for others it is a perfect score. But because it is their choice, they find it personally rewarding.
Using technology to motivate middle school students
Dan Pink on the Science of Motivation
Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories -- and maybe, a way forward.
Let’s look further at one historic series of experiments. Deci & Ryan have published many studies on intrinsic motivation since the early 1970’s, and their research has been verified by follow-up studies. For example, they studied children who were given rewards such as money or grades for performing an intrinsically interesting task like solving a puzzle. They found that when the reward stopped, the “rewarded” children spent less time on the activity that they had previously enjoyed for its own sake. Children engaged in the same experiment who were not rewarded demonstrated no reduction in intrinsic motivation, and children who received feedback (not praise or reward) demonstrated an increase in intrinsic motivation. According to Deci & Ryan (1971), Monetary rewards decrease intrinsic motivation for the rewarded activity—puzzle solving in a laboratory experiment and headline writing in a field experiment. By contrast, positive performance feedback enhanced intrinsic motivation for the target activity in a laboratory experiment. One way to rephrase this in school terms is to suggest that students who enjoy reading for its own sake may enjoy reading less for its own sake if they are given a reward for reading.
Motivating your students with technology
Explore the Motivating Your Students page. You will find a wealth of ideas for encouraging intrinsic motivation in your classroom including links to several different technologies that might help, such as CPS pads (we use Senteo remotes in our district), web conferencing (we use Skype in our district), concept mapping software (we use Inspiration and Kidspiration), screen capturing (we use SmartRecorder), and discussion boards (available through Ning social networking for educators).Motivating students with technology and engaging tasks
Read through this PowerPoint presentation for ideas to motivate students with technology applications by posing challenging and meaningful tasks (the applications information begins on page 15).Motivating students with online assessment
One of the technologies I have found useful in motivating students by giving them objective, instantaneous feedback is www.quia.com. Quia allows me to create assessments with multiple choice, bimodal, matching, short answer, matching, ordering, and essay questions. When I enter the questions, I also enter feedback which the student will read if they get the question wrong. The feedback might be a reminder of the formula they needed to solve the problem or a description of common errors to avoid. All of the questions except for the essay can be graded automatically by the program. When I create an online quiz for my students, I set it up to select 15 questions randomly from a database of questions I have created for that topic. Each time they take the quiz, they get a different set of questions and the program automatically keeps the highest score. And I set it up so that the program tells the student after each question if they have answered correctly or not. Since the computer is scoring the quiz (no partial credit), students perceive the scoring as objective. The instant feedback alerts them to their mistakes so they are less likely to repeat the error in similar problems that follow. And since they are getting a different set of problems each time, I don't mind them retaking the quiz as many times as they want to until they achieve the level of mastery they want. Students are self-motivated to keep working until they reach that goal; for some it is a passing score and for others it is a perfect score. But because it is their choice, they find it personally rewarding.Using technology to motivate middle school students
This article from Teaching Today explores using Webquests, Digital portfolios, and E-pals for motivating students.